School cover spreadsheets. Fine, until the owner is off.

• One owner, one current file, one printout: a spreadsheet can do that
• It gets messy when sickness, split lunch and lesson cover land together
• Staff should not have to guess which attachment is live
• Software is worth it when the morning rewrite is the job

When a spreadsheet is enough

A nursery or a small primary with the same midday team most weeks can live on one sheet. If absences are rare, and the head can hold the pattern in their head, a file on the office laptop is not a failure. Blank templates downloaded in September rarely survive to October, because the school is not generic.

Where the same file breaks

The break is usually a person, not a formula. The owner is in a meeting, or off, and someone else saves a copy. Cover for a TA clashes with a duty they were already on, and the sheet does not notice. In the 15-staff primary example, reprinting and sending the sheet is part of at least 5 hours a week. In the 88-staff secondary example the week is about 8 hours, because lesson cover joins the duties.

What you would be changing

SchoolRota is the weekly pattern plus a daily board, with a published PDF and an email, so midday staff are not logging in. You still decide who moves. It will not build the teaching timetable and it will not book supply. If the spreadsheet is calm, keep it. If the morning is the spreadsheet, that is the point of the product.

What a workable cover spreadsheet contains

A sheet that survives past October usually has four things people open: the weekly pattern, the staff list with the constraint that matters (first aid, a 1:1, cannot leave the gate), a cover log, and some way to see who has already been used. COUNTIF can count cover. VLOOKUP can fetch a name. None of that notices that the person you just typed is already teaching period 2.

There is no clash check, no single published version, and no revision history beyond whatever Windows or Google kept. If the colour code lives in one person's head, the sheet is already a single point of failure. How to plan the morning is the job the sheet is trying to do.

The morning the file breaks

About 07:40 the phone goes. You open the file, find a name who looks free, check the other tab for clashes, rewrite the row, print, and pin it. At 08:05 a third absence arrives. The staffroom printout is the old one, and someone has already forwarded yesterday's attachment. Intervention sessions disappear in that rewrite. Six weeks later nobody can say how many ELSA groups ran.

Senior leaders then ask for a coverage number. The honest answer is a recollection, unless you kept a log by hand. That log is the first thing that falls off when the morning is busy. The comparison, including when you should keep the sheet, is SchoolRota vs spreadsheets. The product side is cover management.

Signs it is time to stop

More than one live copy. Cover that staff did not know about. No answer to who has covered most this term. The rota owner off, and nobody else able to open the right tab. A request for a report that meant rebuilding the sheet. Any one of those is enough. You do not need all five. A quiet school with one owner and one printout can ignore this list. The list is for the school that already recognises itself in it.

You can paste or import the current staff list and, where you have it, a teaching timetable. The old sheet can stay up for a week while you check the PDF matches what you would have printed. Export back to Excel still exists if a governor wants a file. Five signs the spreadsheet is done is the longer list.

Keeping the sheet is a real option

If one person owns one file, absences are rare, and the printout matches the email, you are not failing. SchoolRota is for the point where that stops being true. The 15-staff primary model and the 88-staff secondary model are floors for busy weeks, not a bill you are required to recognise. Read them before you decide the morning is 'just how schools are'.

Common questions

Is a cover spreadsheet wrong?

No. It is the normal tool until the school outgrows one editor and one printout. The problem is an outdated copy in the staffroom, not the fact of using Excel.

What should a cover spreadsheet contain?

The post or lesson, the time, the name, and the constraint that stops a bad swap: first aid, a 1:1, or a lesson they are already teaching. A tab no one opens does not count.

Do we have to leave the spreadsheet on day one?

No. Many schools run the old sheet in parallel for a week while they check the PDF matches what they would have printed. The trial is 30 days and does not need a card.

Can I import my spreadsheet into SchoolRota?

Staff can come in from a CSV, or from SCIM if you use Entra or Google. A teaching timetable can come from a CSV export. Setup can also read a pasted rota and draft the board. You still check it before anything is published.

What happens to my old rota data?

The old file stays yours. SchoolRota does not take it over. Many schools run the sheet in parallel for a few days and compare the PDF with what they would have printed.

Can we export back to Excel?

Yes. You can export a spreadsheet as well as a PDF and a print pack. Some schools publish the board and still pin a copy on the staffroom wall.

See also how to plan the morning, cover software, duty rotas and the 15-staff primary example.